Backup master class: Let’s get NASty

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Thus far, our backup series has been primarily concerned with software and online solutions. Now we’re turning our attention to personal backup solutions that attach to a home network. Dubbed NAS (network attached storage), these products offer a local storage pool to the other devices on a network, without being tied directly to any single PC.

DAS vs. NAS: Parsing the difference

Before we launch into a discussion of our various NAS devices, we need to touch on how the storage market has evolved in the past ten years. Back in 2002, an external hard drive was a hard drive with a wall wart, an enclosure, and a USB cable. If you wanted an external drive, you bought one. If you wanted an external drive array with network capabilities, sophisticated backup software, and independent file-sharing or FTP options, you bought a NAS. Gigabit NAS devices were also significantly faster than Firewire 400, USB, or USB 2.0-based external drives.

Ten years later, the balance of power has shifted dramatically. External drives, also known as direct-attached storage (DAS) devices, are often sold in multi-drive RAID configurations, with bundled backup software or useful configuration tools of their own. The advent of USB 3 and Thunderbolt has kicked vanilla external drive performance from teeth-grindingly slow to sprightly. This doesn’t make NAS devices spurious, but it suggests a useful starting point for evaluating whether or not you should consider a NAS product in the first place.

Do you need a RAID?

All three of the products we’re reviewing today are two-bay solutions that can be configured as JBOD (just a bunch of disks), RAID 0, or RAID 1. RAID arrays don’t provide backup protection — the idea that they do is one of the most common backup myths — so are they useful in this context? We think so. Redundant and backup may not be synonyms where data is concerned, but that doesn’t make redundancy pointless. A two-disk RAID 1 ensures that the user won’t need to re-copy the entire array contents across the network in the event of a single drive failure; RAID synchronization is handled internally on the unit itself.

One other potential advantage is drive accessibility. Single-drive units are almost always sold in enclosures that users can’t open without voiding the warranty. Multi-bay products, in contrast, are typically designed to be user-serviceable. Doing so may still void your warranty, but it extends the useful lifespan of the device.

The contenders

We’ve got three separate solutions up for testing today: Seagate’s BlackArmor NAS 220, Western Digital’s My Book Live Duo, and Synology’s DS213+. The following chart compares the three products. As we’ve stated in previous articles, we’re focused on data backup rather than cross-network sharing, though we’ll highlight some of these features as well.

The “cost per gigabyte” field for the Synology NAS assumes a pair of Western Digital Red 2TB drives. One important point to keep in mind when comparing NAS devices is that advertised capacity is typically given as a RAID 0/JBOD configuration; we’ve included the price/GB for both this option and a hypothetical RAID 1.

This chart, however, just scratches the surface of what each device is capable of, and where the differences lie.

Tagged In

For the computer-savvy, the HP N40L micro server is the best solution I have found. $355, 4 2TB bays (+2 fixed bays if you flash the BIOS), 6 USB ports for expansion, 8GB RAM. I’ve had mine for 6 months and am very pleased. As for speed – I just start Robocopy and review the l;og when it finishes. That’s less than $0.05/GB, and you get a server to boot!

Joel Hruska

Conrad,

That’s an impressive deal — and they’re $319 at Newegg. The cost per GB isn’t quite $0.05, though. The drives I used are $160 each — 4x of them come out to 11 cents per TB. Six would be 10.6 cents per TB.

NotYetRated

Page 4 you have an error. Last paragraph you state “Seagate is faster on average”, whereas you mean Synology. Misleading.

Joel Hruska

NotYet,

That’s not an error.Note the phrase “across our entire range of tests.” Average all of the results shown in the graphs above, and the average performance is:

Western Digital: 21.2MB/s

Seagate: 29.92MB/s

Synology: 45.3MB/s.

NotYetRated

I must be tired, “seagate is faster on average” and “Seagate: 29.92MB/s Synology: 45.3MB/s” = does not compute in my brain

Joel Hruska

NotYet,

“Here, Seagate and Western Digital trade shots on several occasions, but the Seagate is faster on average across our entire range of tests.”

In mathematical terms:

10 is more than 5. Five is more than two.

Five is more than two is still a true statement if we remove the “10 is more than five.”

Synology is faster than Seagate. Seagate is faster than Western Digital.”

Given that MBL Duo doesn’t have a fan, didn’t you have any problem of overheating during your test? How many hours did you play with it?

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